


Dreams

by Bacner



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU - Canon Divergence, Dreams, F/M, Fix-It, Friendship, Gen, Hiatus, Post-Hiatus, tropical paradise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 22:52:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8916241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bacner/pseuds/Bacner
Summary: Post-Maveth AU. Grant Ward is dead, but...not exactly. Now, Coulson and his people are in more trouble than they were before...





	1. Dreams I

Phil Coulson was happy. The sky was blue, the sea was warm and tropical, the horizon was peaceful and serene, Grant was dead, and Rosalind – alive. All was fine in the world, or at least – in his dreams.

“The drinks are almost ready!” he called out to his girlfriend. 

“Thanks, Phil! I’m partial to good ale myself!” Grant Ward, who was decisively not Rosalind Price, called back.

Phil dropped the glasses and slowly walked forth outside. Rosalind was still there, frozen and still, as was the rest of Coulson’s dream, which turned static and fake. Grant Ward, however, was very much alive and mobile, as was...some other person, whose features Coulson could not quite recognize or distinguish.

“What’s up?” Grant called jovially. “Didn’t expect to see me so soon?”

“You’re dead, you son of a bitch,” Coulson growled out. “I-“

“Crushed my chest so that I’d die?” Grant finished, with a good-natured twinkle in his eyes. “That was a very good idea, director Coulson, pity that you got too fancy – and there was help for me at hand,” he pointed to his companion. “Malick was wrong, you know? Our friend here is no evil, just the last member of an ancient symbiotic race, created by the dominant species of its home planet, until they destroyed it and themselves. How very human of them. Our friend here barely survived from host to host, keeping them alive until their minds succumbed to madness brought on by loneliness – a damage that not even our friend here could fix. Fortunately, then it met me, and now, we’re no longer lonely.” Grant smiles, a tiny smile, which somehow makes things worse. “And just wait until Jemma Simmons joins the party. She and ‘Will’ became quite good friends, on the planet, you know, and the man cannot wait to introduce himself in person here, aye!”

“You,” Coulson takes a deep breath. He wants to tell Grant once more that he is hollow, he doesn’t even want Hydra, just a stage and an audience, he wants to tell him that S.H.I.E.L.D. will end him once and for all, but Grant reaches out – into the older man’s chest – and pulls out his beating heart. It is still connected to the rest of Coulson, with arteries and veins and nerves and whatnot, and it is still beating.

“A live man’s heart, the seat of his passions, the root of his emotions,” Grant mutters, even as his new ‘friend’ brings the dream-Rosalind over. “It is hot, it is alive, it is beating. It is fire! A heart of a woman – a dead woman, a dead dream woman, on the other hand,” he shifts, and with his other hand he pulls out Rosalind’s heart – still and grey like that of a stone, although it is too attached to the rest of her by organs. “Is none of those things, wouldn’t you agree?” he turns back to the director. “It is such a pity, Phil, that you never knew that I have even more tricks up my sleeves than you knew, because otherwise? You would’ve brought me back from the alien planet, oh yeah.”

Phil Coulson says nothing. This is still a dream, but the fact that his heart is in Grant’s hands makes him more reluctant to resist. Furthermore, the scenery around them changes, it is still tropical, but it is no island paradise any longer, rather, it is a shore of some meandering river in Africa, as the nearby hippo can testify. Curiously, it is moving closer and closer to them – Coulson could smell its bad breath, see its huge tusks of teeth – it was only the triangular fin of a shark that distracted him from the bad sight.

“There are no sharks in fresh water, Grant,” he finally managed to speak. “You’re getting sloppy-“

“Phil, that’s bull – bull shark, that is,” Grant chuckled back. “They live in both fresh and salt water, but an empty suit like you wouldn’t know it, now would you? Never did much missions in the wilderness, the great outdoors, am I right?” As he chuckled, the shark reached the shallows so that its back would be exposed and stopped. In addition, the hippopotamus made its way over Coulson and Grant, Grant’s new ‘friend’ and Rosalind and stopped as well.

“Now, I could just plug-in your hearts into each other and enjoy the show how she slowly drains the life out of you and watches you perish before dropping back dead herself once more,” Grant chuckled, even as he grew two more arms, and pulled out the hearts of the hippo and the shark. “But that would be too crude, and I have long-term plans for all of you. So, let’s make it much more long-lasting and interesting!” With these words, Grant fused Rosalind’s heart with the shark’s, Coulson’s – with the hippopotamus’, and then he jammed the two fusions into each other: Coulson awoke with a scream as a sudden blast of hot pain. It was as if something both hot and cold burst in his chest, and he felt empowered, alive.

“Phil, Phil,” it was Melinda hammering at his door. “Are you-?”

“Just a bad dream,” Coulson grunted, aware that it was not, that he was not feeling anything like his normal self, “go back to bed.”

“I cannot, Phil – it isn’t about you!” Melinda exclaimed. “It’s Price, back in our morgue – she’s both fully healed and alive!”

...And suddenly the director could no longer deny it, but his last dream was no longer a dream, but real.

_TBC?_


	2. Dreams II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the previous chapter.

Melinda May was…Melinda May. That is to say, she was neither happy nor sad but rather in a state of mind that only she knew for real what it was. This was not unusual – for her – and neither was the reason behind this state of affairs – Phil Coulson, one of the few people in the world, or even S.H.I.E.L.D., that could get to her.

Of course, so could a few other people, most of whom were in S.H.I.E.L.D, but right now Melinda could have had problems figuring out just who was bothering her the most: Phil Coulson, for being himself, Rosalind Price, for being with Coulson, or Grant Ward, who was dead. 

No, really, he was – certainly, he had not made another appearance ever since the entire mess with the alien planet, when Coulson had supposedly killed him. Only he had not, apparently, and instead Ward had resurrected Rosalind because he was this sort of a man. How exactly was an-other question, only Phil knew, and not very well: his story was confusing in its own way, but one thing was for sure: Coulson had been asleep when their latest mess started, and now-

And now Melinda was trying to do the same thing, sort of, to see if Grant Ward would respond to her too, but for several weeks by now, she had no luck – there was no response, no nothing. It was annoying. Melinda was actually busy wondering if she should quit, even though she hated quitting…

“You know, we did think to check on you earlier, but we weren’t sure just what the point would be,” spoke a familiar voice, out of the blue.

Melinda turned around, her face firmly in place. “33,” she replied, neutrally. “You were dead, weren’t you?”

“Yes, well, after that parasite John Garrett, Grant actually has more skills and experiences in keeping people alive that you might think – and call me Palamas instead. I hate 33 nowadays,” the other woman shrugged, her face once more her own and unscarred. “He kept me alive long enough to bring back the alien symbiont to resolve all the issues, even though he did keep it long enough to have resolution with your boss.”

“He was your boss too,” Melinda could not help but to point out.

33/Palamas shook her head. “No. I never did swear the oath to him; I did swear it to Fury, I suppose, but that is different, at least to me.”

There was an awkward pause; Melinda hated awkward, so she filled it:

“I’m sorry, on some level, for how you died, but I am also certainly that I don’t regret it. Were you ever going to return to S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

The other woman seemed to be genuinely thinking this over. “Probably not,” she shook her head. “If Morse had apologized to me back then, then maybe. But now I am meaningless to her, she herself and her apology are meaningless to me, and S.H.I.E.L.D. is largely meaningless to me too.”

“…Bobbi Morse is a contradictory woman, but she isn’t the face of S.H.I.E.L.D, not anymore,” Melinda argued, while remembering some issues from the ‘old’ S.H.I.E.L.D. “It didn’t have to end- to play-out like this.”

“Agreed, and if you like me to, I will admit that to someone like you it was my fault as well,” Palamas got onto her feet. “I don’t regret my choices either. Guess some things are just meant to be. Anything else, or can I go? The symbiont is useful, but Grant is right – it is dangerous to keep it for too long once it has healed you.”

“…I don’t know,” Melinda admitted, ignoring the issue of the alien symbiont raised by Kara. “Whenever Phil gets involved in something like this, there is drama, and excitement, and some sort of an adventure, and a revelation or a break-through at the end. I've currently tried it with you, and…” she looked away, before finishing, in a quieter voice, “this isn’t what I wanted. Not as an end-game, not as an anything.”

There was silence. Melinda looked back. The other woman has vanished. Cursing, Melinda woke-up herself.

_TBC_


	3. Dreams III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the previous chapters, again.

...And so, since that night, neither agent 33 (okay, Kara Palamas) nor Grant Ward appeared to be interested in interacting with Melinda...or with the rest of the agency, really. Sure, there were some confrontations of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s with people who were probably allies and/or minions of the duo, but, frankly, S.H.I.E.L.D. had confrontations with a lot of people, organizations, entities and etc. over the years, so really, it was hard to tell and for Melinda it wasn't the same. Thus, she continued to meditate, research and otherwise attempt to interact with Grant or Kara in the dreamworld, but it didn't work; instead of meeting either of them, she continued to see all sort of ridiculous dreams, (and Melinda hated ridiculous) like on this occasion, when she had to clean the Augean stables. 

The stables were full of - dung, and other muck, and also of cattle: 3000 that were white as snow, 2000 that were red as blood, and the leader of the herd that shone as a star would in the dark. All of them were huge and with proverbial bovine tempers, so everyone was avoiding them. The cattle were bound to their stables with gold chains, and a seriously concentrated reek of dung and rotting straw was miasming above the once-fancy stables.

...Melinda looked down at her shovel, and then at the mountain located some distance away from the stables and the two rivers running down its' slopes. And then she looked at the stables and at herself. "Well, I'm no Hercules, so I think that I might have a problem," she muttered, mostly to herself, but someone else answered her instead:

"Yeah, true, but you generally don't give up either," Grant Ward pointed out as he and Kara flanked the Chinese agent. "Still, since this is your first main attempt in a long while, how about the two of us help you instead?"

Melinda wasn't startled, but still... "Your sense of humor sucks," she said instead. She wanted to take a deep breath, but the circumstances were really against this, so she didn't. Rather, she turned around and walked to the palace, where she told the king Augeus that she can clean the stables in a day. The king had a good laugh. So did his courtiers and guests of the royal palace. So did his servants and slaves. So did his soldiers and city guards. So did his citizens...

Melinda didn't care about them; she was much more worried about Grant and Kara vanishing once again into thin air, but now there was nothing that she could do other than to wake up, and she didn't want to, so instead she sat down and had a meal instead.

* * *

The next morning, (time moves differently in dreams, anyhow), Melinda was off to the mountain, where Grant, Kara, and another man whom Grant introduced as Kebo were waiting for her. Together, they began to fell trees and to dam the rivers without anyone bothering them. Well, it was mostly Grant and Kebo - Kara and Melinda were rather enjoying the sight of some sweating muscular shirtless men...so yeah, this was going better than the first time that Melinda contacted Kara Lynn (or vice versa).

Soon enough, with four people of varied skills working together, both of the rivers were dammed, and the water began to rise. The royal servants, who were in charge of the royal cattle, were warned to get the cattle out of the stables - and they reluctantly did. Just in time too, for as the sun began to set, the waters of the rivers finally overflowed the dams and went pouring down the mountainside, into the city, and through the stables. They carried all of the refuse and the miasma from the city and into the fields beyond it in under 45 minutes...

"...And the king Augeus still refused to pay Hercules, and Erystheus claimed that this labor was void," Grant commented as the dream faded, leaving just Melinda, him and the others. "But this is neither here nor there - we didn't know you to be a fan of the Classical myths."

"I'm not, but I do know them," Melinda replied in her usual sarcastic manner before changing her tac. "Thank you for finally contacting me."

"Yes, well, it had to be done - apparently, you wouldn't leave us be otherwise," Grant replied sourly. "So, here we are, and here you are, and, well, what now?"

"I apologize," Melinda exhaled. "What you did was wrong, and is wrong, and will be wrong, but you have tried to change, somehow or other, which is also important. We...also handled you wrong, as people and as agents, and for that I apologize."

"I accept it," Grant replied slowly, "will you accept mine-?"

"Yes, I do," Melinda replied. "Now what?"

"Well, the ball is in your court, so to speak," Kara said thoughtfully. "What did you have in mind, anyhow?"

Melinda told them.


End file.
